


Duke Ex Machina

by kittydesade



Category: Haven - Fandom
Genre: Gen, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-25
Updated: 2011-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-28 02:14:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/302625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittydesade/pseuds/kittydesade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As if conjured up by fortuitous magic, a Duke, out of the machine...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Duke Ex Machina

**Author's Note:**

  * For [elynross](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elynross/gifts).



Duke found Nathan at the edge of the water, about where he'd expected. He didn't know why Nathan suddenly favored this stretch of the beach, although he could come up with a couple of pretty good guesses, but it was starting to be the go-to place whenever something really bad had happened and then no one could find him. "You turned off your radio," he called down. Nathan didn't twitch.

Funny, Duke expected to be told off. Kept waiting for it. Listened. Nothing. The ocean and the gulls were pretty talkative, but Nathan wasn't saying a word.

"People are worried about you."

Nathan's hands were in his pockets, shoulders pulled forward and he was even more inscrutable than usual as he stared out at the water. Duke reached up and extended a finger to poke at his shoulder, then changed his mind and pushed him to one side.

Nathan stumbled against a mini-dune. "Hey, what the hell?" He turned towards Duke, the first sign of animation Duke had seen from the other man all day. He jumped back in mock-shock.

"It lives! Gasp!"

"Funny." He folded his arms up over his chest, tucked his hands, went back to brooding. Duke gave him a quizzical look and then pulled himself up in what he felt was a damn good imitation of Nathan's sulky attitude. "Will you quit it? Don't you have a shipment to, to receive or something?"

"Actually, no." Duke smiled. Sunny and bright, bounce on his toes, be cheerful and obnoxious both because it pissed Nathan off and because Nathan needed to buck up. It wasn't as bad as it could be. In Duke's experience it was never as bad as it could be, because the second you even thought that something worse came along. "So I figured I'd come by and see how you were doing."

Nathan grunted. "How do you think I'm doing."

"Well, I think you're sulking. And I think you're avoiding the real issue, here, which is that you feel like you should have done something, or maybe should have done something more, I don't know, and you're kicking yourself for not being Superman."

He got the side-eye for that one. Nathan was really good at side-eye glares, maybe from having to have good attention and peripheral vision and all that with his whole lack of feeling Trouble.

"You ever wonder why you have such a sucky Trouble?"

" _What?_ "

"No, I mean, seriously," Duke came around in front of him, slipping down the front of the dune a foot or so before he got a stable position. "Okay, granted, it's not as sucky as Dwight's, but I got super strength, Cornell had that whole clone thing going on and, man, haven't you ever wanted to be in two places at once? Audrey gets to have everything just roll off of her..."

Nathan's fist hit the corner of his mouth at approximately one ga-zillion miles per hour, and Duke stumbled back in the sand. He wouldn't have gone down, honest, except that the footing was bad. Hands and heels and butt planted in the sand, he wiped at his lip, then grimaced when some of the sand got into his mouth.

He looked up at Nathan. "You really are messed up about this, aren't you?"

"You didn't have to ..." he shook his head, looked anywhere but at Duke. Who was on the verge of getting up until Nathan came awkwardly down to meet him sitting on the sand, all elbows and bony knees. "I should have been there. We were supposed to have... breakfast, or something. I should have been there."

"And how exactly was you being there going to help? They were armed, okay?" Duke batted at the sand. "Just because you weren't there doesn't mean you didn't do all you could. Sometimes shit just happens."

"No," Nathan snapped at him. "Shit doesn't just happen. Not in this town."

Duke couldn't debate that. Couldn't come up with a coherent and backed up by reasons and facts argument. Even leaving aside the Audrey stuff, even putting aside the increasingly ugly feud between the Troubled and the normal, there was something about that damn box. "You ever stop and wonder how someone could..." But that thought came out of nowhere and went back there just as quickly.

Nathan looked over at him anyway. "How someone could..."

"Nothing, never mind."

"No, keep going." And Duke looked over at him and saw Nathan staring at him, blinking a couple of times and staring the way he did when he realized he'd hurt himself but didn't know how or why. Couldn't feel his body telling him that something was wrong, and knew just enough on both sides of how it felt to feel the difference.

He pushed his hand back up through his hair and sighed, and looked out at the water because he didn't want to see Nathan's face when he pulled out this crazy theory. "You ever stop and wonder how all of this happened? And I don't mean the Troubles. I mean, Audrey coming along like she does, or, well, like she seems to do. Every so often, and she's the only one who isn't affected by the Troubles. And she looks the same, every damn time, she's the same person. With a different set of memories."

He looked back over at Nathan after he finished that part of it. Snorted and rolled his eyes, with the look on Nathan's face as distant and longing as it was. Like it belonged on the cover of a romance novel. "She's just special, I guess," Nathan said, and now Duke openly snickered at him.

"Uh-huh." He swallowed. "You ever stop and wonder how come she exists, and I exist?"

"What do you mean?" From sappy romantic hero to cop in two point five seconds.

"Me, I exist to get rid of the Troubles, the way she does. Only... only not the way she does. I have to kill someone to get rid of it." Duke propped his forearms up on his knees and looked down at his hands dangling between. "I could get rid of the Troubles completely. Except mine. I'd just have to kill a hell of a lot of people to do it," he laughed, and it sounded rough and twisted even to him. God, he wasn't going to do that. Nathan knew. "You know I'm not planning on killing anyone, right?"

Nathan rolled his eyes this time. "Of course not."

"You sure?"

Duke wasn't so sure, now that he'd said it. "I still... I don't think I've ever killed someone with a knife before."

Every word of that hung between them like spiders dangling from a strand of web, poisonous ones. Think, he didn't think he'd ever killed someone. With a knife, killed someone with a knife, as opposed to a gun. All the little ways this conversation could go so far south, for each of them. It came as something of a shock to Duke when all Nathan did was reach out and close a hand on his shoulder. "You're not a killer. Even with your Trouble," he said. Duke hunched over further because when it came down to it, he didn't deserve that kind of faith, not from the guy who had kind of been his friend a long time ago and who, since then, he'd done some pretty shitty stuff to. "What? Trust me, you're not. I've dealt with killers before."

"Gee, thanks," Duke snorted, pretending it didn't matter. Pretending he didn't feel better about his Trouble and the ghosts of the Rev and his father telling him to kill people for the good of everyone else. Especially with his father and all the mystery of the Crocker family line come down on his head. He didn't want to think about that right now. He'd done about all the thinking on the Troubles that he was going to.

Nathan wasn't done, though. "It does seem kind of contrived," he murmured, back out to the water. "You. Audrey. Makes you wonder what's with everyone else's Trouble."

"Everyone's got their job to do, maybe? I don't know." Duke shrugged. "Maybe by all our powers combined we can summon Captain Planet."

Nathan snorted. Chuckled. Possibly even dripped a hint of spittle, that sounded like an explosive and unexpected laugh. His hand slipped down to Duke's back, and neither man dared comment on it. "Let's not, huh? The last thing this town needs is a big, baby blue guy with green hair in a red bikini."

Duke would come up with a reply to that one of these days. When he finished being doubled up with laughter. "You watched Captain Planet?"

"Shut up."

"No, seriously, you watched Captain Planet?"

"I said, shut up."

The giggles tapered off. Neither of them moved. The evening chill seeped into the air as the sun dropped down, from mid afternoon to late. It wasn't dusk yet, but it wasn't that far off, either. Duke scooted a little closer. "So, are you going to rejoin the rest of us, Mr. Broodypants?"

"Mr. Broody. Pants?" Nathan's eyebrows did a curlicue thing. Duke could tell he wanted to laugh, but wasn't quite there yet. "Really?"

"'cause if you're going to be a Mr. Broodypants, I'm going to have to do something I really don't want to do."

"Uh-huh. And what's that?"

Shit. Dilemma time, because tickle torture wouldn't work, and neither would noogie's or wet willies. Nathan's trouble could be a bitch and a half sometimes, when Duke was trying to be good.

He turned to the other man, pulled a solemn face. "I'm going to have to give you a hug." Only he stretched it out to three or four syllables, _hu-uh-uh-ug_. "Come here. Come over here, Mr. Broodypants..."

"Duke..."

"Come on, let it out..."

"Duke, I'm telling you..."

"It's all right, Mr. Broodypants..."

"DUKE!"


End file.
